In Dark Fairy Tales, collector and storyteller Viktor Wynd shares a trove of eerie, risqué, and grotesque tales gathered on his travels from Ireland and Norway to Papua New Guinea and Borneo. Encounter trolls, witches, shapeshifters, changelings, and even a baby-eating pig in stories that amuse as much as they disturb.
Each tale is framed by Wynd’s own eccentric anecdotes, blending humor with horror, while Luciana Nedelea’s intricate illustrations capture their eerie beauty. With silver foil details and stencilled edges, this book is as much a mysterious artefact as it is a collection of stories—perfect for curious minds and lovers of the strange and uncanny.
Viktor Wynd is a writer, artist, and curator, best known as the founder of the Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & UnNatural History in London. Through his boutique travel company, Gone with the Wynd, he leads small expeditions to Papua New Guinea, the Congo, and other far-flung destinations in search of the marvellous and bizarre. He is also the author of Viktor Wynd’s Cabinet of Wonders and The UnNatural History Museum (both published by Prestel).
Viktor has kindly allowed us to publish one of the stories from the collection and we honed in on the story inspired by his journeys to Wales. Here it is:
Our little girl does not want to go down the mine.
The Christian does not want the little people – the pooka – to be fed.
But who will have the power? Who will have the glory?
The Pooka and the Old Ways Triumph Over the Christian
Long, long ago – perhaps as long ago as the time the blessed saints Julian and Aaron were martyred – the people of Great Orme, next to what is now Llandudno, were copper miners. Life was hard on the grim north coast of Wales. It was not possible to scratch a good living from farming, but scratching down beneath the rocks, they’d found copper. Everyone worked down the mines and everyone lived well, but they did not work alone, for the pooka lived in the mines and helped them. I can’t describe a pooka because I have never seen one, but they are still about, I’m told. Every description I have ever heard is different. Some say they are very small; others say they are very big. They are like us, but they are not us. They change their shapes and become animals, but when they look like us, there’s often something slightly wrong – they’re mischievous, they think in the moment, act quickly – so perhaps they’ll still be all covered with fur, have a tail, a hare’s ears, a dog’s nose, or some other thing about them that makes you realise they are of the otherworld.
Since time immemorial, the pooka had guided the miners by tapping the ground where rich seams of copper could be found. If someone got lost in the labyrinthine maze or their lamp went out, the pooka would tap them up to the surface. It was a mutually beneficial relationship. Long ago a deal had been done via elaborate and secret rituals wherein, every week, a different family of initiated miners prepared a feast. The offerings varied with the seasons: a lamb or deer might be roasted, special cakes made, jams delivered, loaves baked.
On that fateful day, a man dressed in rags came to the village. They treated him as they treated all strangers, with courtesy and respect. They even let him build a hut in the woods and gave him food. He would talk to them about a new god – a god that was not just one god, but was three gods, but was also one god. A god that demanded that they drink its blood and eat its flesh. A god who would grant them many things. A god that had hardly been seen since the beginning of time, but who had a son who had been seen, and been killed by some people far away, yet had not really been killed. On top of this nonsense (for their gods died all the time and didn’t make much fuss about it, just simply reappeared), he said that they were all sinners, and guilty of the murder of this man/god who hadn’t really died? They took him for another travelling fool and hoped he’d go away soon, not that there was any harm in him. And as for all his words against the pooka, well, he was a madman, was he not?
Unfortunately, there was one girl in the village, Winnifred, who listened to him. She was terrified of the mine. She hated it, and knew that in a couple of years, she would have to join everyone else underground with the dreadful pooka. She liked the sound of this new god, and she asked him to get rid of the copper and the pooka, so she wouldn’t have to go underground. Her brother Owen had recently been initiated, and when it was his turn to help prepare and take the family feast down the mines, Winnifred said that she would take it for him. He laughed at this; he loved his sister dearly and knew how she hated the mines – but she pointed out how tired and exhausted he was. Truth to tell, he was tired and exhausted, and had been down the mines already once that day. The time would come soon enough when she would have to join him, so she might as well get used to it.
Winnifred took the offerings straight to the man in rags, and they both laughed and feasted on it themselves (they couldn’t eat it all, but he said he’d eat the rest another time). Tomorrow, he said, there would still be plenty of copper, and then he would preach again, such a sermon on the wickedness of giving food to non-existent magical troglodytes that he would convert them all. But, alas, there was no copper the next day, nothing but long, worried faces. Owen asked Winnifred if she’d left the offerings, and she said of course she had. However, all week there was no copper. Everyone looked grimmer and grimmer, and her brother started to worry that there had been something wrong with the ritual since it was his first time, and he had been tired and exhausted. As time went on and no copper was found, people began to talk of the days before the accommodation had been reached with the pooka, when they’d sacrificed young men to them. People in the village began to talk of Owen. It must have been something he’d done, they said.
On the night of the full bilberry moon, Winnifred woke up with the feeling something was wrong. She leant over to nudge her brother, but he wasn’t there. She knew in an instant that he had gone to offer himself as a sacrifice in the mine, and she knew that that was wrong. If anyone had to be sacrificed, it would be her. Taking a lamp, she ran to the mine, her heart filled with horror and fear. She went in and she went down, down, down until, deep in the mine, she turned a corner and her lamp went out. She threw herself on the floor and began to cry. She felt she was not alone; she knew something – or someone – was with her, and it filled her with horror. She could barely breathe. It was a not a friendly something, but it was definitely a something, and not a someone, and it was coming for her.
She screamed out and begged that they take her and let her brother live. It was her fault, she said, she’d been led astray, but it wasn’t her brother’s fault. She cried, ‘Take me, take me, not him. It was my doing.’ She said the offerings would continue just as before, ‘But don’t kill Owen, kill me.’ And then, just like that, she felt she was alone. She didn’t know what to do. She tried to walk but didn’t know where, so she stopped. After what seemed an age, but might have been a minute (well, probably not a minute, but not an hour either), she heard a tapping, a friendly tapping, and she went to it. The tapping led on down shaft after shaft, deep, deep into the earth, until in the far distance she saw a faint glow and found Owen with a broken leg. Then the tapping started again, and putting her brother’s arm around her shoulders, she supported Owen all the way out of the mine.
The next day, the tapping started again. Copper was found, and a huge feast was prepared and taken to the pooka. People were not cross with Winnifred – it was not her fault, she had been led astray – but they were cross with the man in rags. And I won’t tell what they did to him, but I know it was not a nice thing, or things. For his sake, let us hope he joined saints Julian and Aaron in another world and lived happily ever after. The pooka were very pleased and got a special treat they had not had for many centuries.
Extracted from Dark Fairy Tales by Viktor Wynd – out now from Prestel Publishing.
